Proper illumination of surfaces for purposes of visual inspection presents a number of challenges, particularly when the surfaces to be inspected are recessed and reflective, such as in the case of an image intensifier tube screen optic. Conventional commercially available light sources such as ring lamps, hemispherical reflecting illuminators, grazing illuminators, panel illuminators, ambient light sources, scanned laser, etc., do not uniformly illuminate surfaces, particularly when the surface is recessed, sufficiently for camera-based image analysis. The commercially available light sources fail due to hot spots of intensity formed on the reflective surface, because light from such sources cannot be directed sufficiently into recesses to prevent shadows on the surface being inspected, large size of such sources prevents proper lighting of small structures received in test fixtures, physical spacing requirements work outside of short focal camera operation, etc. Accordingly, research and development of lighting systems that overcome these shortfalls is ongoing.